In the last fifteen to twenty years, the utilisation of “personal” computers has exploded, along with the rapid advent of the Internet and other networked environments of such personal computers. Such personal computers are used in both the business world and at home, enabling widespread variations in both hardware and software installed on such computers.
Along with the widespread adoption of personal computers, there has arisen along with it the need for “help desks” and information technology (IT) support to help people with difficulties using their computers. This represents a significant expense for businesses and other organisations. For example, in large corporate environments where many users utilise a network environment, IT specialists and help desk personnel must be available to minimise downtime arising from hardware and software conflicts and other problems that arise. The same applies for example with Internet service providers. For example, an organisation might use a standard word processing application, but due to the differing hardware configurations, operating systems, network environments, software drivers, and the like problems regularly arise leading to downtime and other expenses arising from such inefficiencies, as well as the additional expense of IT personnel and the like who have to try to resolve these problems. This is often like looking for a needle in a hay stack.
Thus, a need clearly exists for an improved system for structuring computer configurations in large network environments.